Introduction
A significant number of New York City’s homeless children are housed in foster homes throughout the city. These homes have increasingly become important in helping homeless children live normal lives, as well as building strong foundations for their future. In the attempt to illustrate the importance of foster homes in helping needy children, concurrent sections of this paper shall use Roslyn Mickelson’s insights as building blocks. The paper shall elaborate on the importance and challenges facing the system, as well expressing ideas on how to improve the current status.
Among the major challenges facing the system is a family separation that is caused by members of the homeless being housed in different foster cares (Mickelson 61). This is shown by the specialization that is seen in the city’s, as well as the country’s, foster homes. Indeed, most foster care chooses to either house children (boys, girls, or both), whereas parents are forced to look for other places to stay. The lucky parents could find nice places to seek refuge but could be far away from where their children are housed. This means that they cannot afford to meet on a regular basis.
Main body
Though children are well-taken care of in their respective foster homes, growing up without being close to their parents robs them of a special attachment, loving, and parental care. This could hurt the children’s psychological well-being despite the high quality of life that could be experienced at their respective foster cares. Parents, too suffer from a lack of closeness between them and their kids. Though the parents are relieved of the pains of suffering together with kids on city streets, the pain for not seeing kids more often could take the toll of their hardship in coupling with poverty-ridden lives (McMahon A6).
Foster homes have to also face the challenge of developing the mentalities of the children are their clients, and care should be provided on that basis. According to Mickelson (16), developing such a mentality could lead to the children being helped have some entitlement thoughts that could jeopardize systems effectiveness. These children could also fail to develop self-dependency attitudes that would aid in their working hard by taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the system. Foster families should therefore embark on providing the best care, but also help homeless children develop self-dependence.
Despite the just mentioned challenges that the foster family system has to overcome, there are many strengths that have enabled the system to help many homeless children. First, the system is said to be less restrictive in the process of helping Homeless children overcome their challenges (Mickelson 87). This develops from fact that this helpings system works from a family perspective That is, the children are treated as members of their new homes. As a result, the kids are able to grow to have a family experience, compared to other systems that provide other settings. Parental absence is therefore filled by the foster parents, whereas that of siblings is filled by children in the foster homes.
Foster homes are also credited with providing excellent rehabilitation programs for homeless children suffering from addiction of stigma related challenges (CAB 24). This is aided by the support which foster parents receive from well-wishers. In addition, having foster-related issues done through legal processes mean that authorities would consistently monitor progress being made, as well as providing support and advice to the parents. The work done by foster families is therefore posed to be a satisfactory one, given the presence of procedures ensuring that all is done in a transparent manner that avoids hurting the children that the system is supposed to help.
These families are also credited with the ability to guide Homeless children’s road to gaining psychological and cultural developments that are important for their long-term well-being. This is done by successfully preparing children for their lives after leaving foster homes. Doing this in a family setting help foster parents to track the progress being made and subsequently provide advice where needed. The children also benefit from having adults close enough to ask questions and assure them when needed.
Conclusion
However, despite the benefits of the system in meeting the needs of Homeless children in the city, the city governments have not been providing enough support, which would help foster families to wither through challenges and improve on already strong areas in the system (Mickelson 132). Some of the ways that local authorities can improve the system is by providing both sets of parents (biological and foster) to meet regularly as well as communicate issues regards the children. In addition, authorities should ensure that biological parents have a satisfactory attachment to their children. However, this should not be done at the expense of foster parents who provide facilities and resources to ensure that Homeless children live normal lives. Authorities in the system should consider that homeless children’s best interests are only met when all stakeholders are included in the process, failure of which would lead to inefficiency in this important system.
References
CAB. Profiling New York’s Street Families. New York: Dpt. Of Homeless, 2006.
McMahon, Robert. New York’s Homeless Population. 2006. New York Times. 2008. Web.
Mickelson, Roslyn. Children on America’s Streets. New York: Routledge, 2000.